Employee Identity in Indian Call Centres

Abstract

Based on a series of qualitative inquiries exploring employee experiences of work in international facing call centres in Mumbai and Bangalore, India, this book presents the lived experience of call centre agents, coupled with managers’ perspectives and trade unionists’ viewpoints. The book underscores how employee identity is defined by the notion of professionalism. Inculcated in agents by employer organizations, professional identity is invoked as a means of gaining employee commitment to the realization of organizational goals in a bid to ensure competitive advantage. While professional identity is associated with a host of privileges, it not only results in agents justifying and complying with organizational requirements and absorbing job-related strain but also precludes agents’ engagement with collectivist endeavours aimed at representing and protecting their interests, causing the nascent trade union movement in this sector to reinvent itself. While employer organizations thus rely on the notion of professionalism to achieve organizational ends, they admit to discrepancies in the enactment of professionalism, indicating the presence of rhetoric. Providing new and holistic insights gained via rigorous academic research, this book is of value to HR and OB professionals and scholars, industrial relations experts, sociologists, psychologists and trade unionists, as well as readers interested in India’s ITES-BPO sector.